Chapter 29

Between the camp and Caesar’s line of march ran a narrow river with very high banks, which flowed into the Nile and was some seven miles distant from the king’s camp. When the king learned that Caesar was coming by this route, he despatched all his cavalry and a picked force of light-armed infantry to this river to prevent Caesar from crossing it and to engage at long range from its banks—an unfair engagement, for the spot could neither afford scope for valour nor involve cowardice in any risk. These tactics filled our infantry and cavalry with burning resentment at the thought that for so long their struggle with the Alexandrians should prove a drawn battle. And so, at the same time as scattered groups of German cavalry, looking for places to ford the river, swam across it at some points where the banks were lower, simultaneously the legionary troops, having felled lofty trees tall enough to reach from bank to bank, hurled them forward and crossed the river on a causeway hastily thrown on top. So terrified were the enemy by their attack, that they pinned their hopes of deliverance to flight: in vain, however: for few survived that rout to take refuge with the king, and practically all the remainder were killed.